Conejo district hopes to sell land to fund high school

Google street photo: The school district has placed the high school campus and maintenance facility at the corner of Kelley and Newbury roads on the market as two 5-acre parcels with a minimum bid of $3 million per parcel under its current zoning of commercial use.

A new campus for Conejo Valley High School remains a top priority even though plans to sell surplus school district properties to help pay for it have hit roadblocks.

On Tuesday, the Conejo Valley Unified School District Board of Education unanimously voted to place a 10.7-acre site in the Rancho Conejo industrial area of Newbury Park back on the market after failing to reach a final purchase agreement with a potential buyer.

"The developer was continually trying to lower the price and couldn't get the financing in place so we decided to put the property out to bid again," Superintendent Jeff Baarstad said.

The city of Thousand Oaks deeded the site to the school district in 2000 as a potential site for the construction of a maintenance facility to replace one at the district's Kelley Road property.

It was part of a proposed $20 million capital project that would have included the construction of a new campus for the continuation high school next to the district head office on Janss Road. The city would have bought the Kelley Road site for a new family community center.

However, state budget cuts and the dissolution of the Thousand Oaks Redevelopment Agency slowed the project and forced the district to scale back its plans.

The preferred option now is to move the school and the maintenance facility to existing buildings rather than construct new ones. Relocation would be cheaper and allow the district to sell the Conejo Center Drive land and Kelley Road site to help fund the project, Baarstad said.

"This relocation effort has to be self-sustained," he said. "We want to make sure we relocate both these facilities without any pressure on the district's general fund."

The district has identified an office building it could renovate to house Conejo Valley High for 60 percent of the cost of a new campus at Janss Road, Baarstad said.

The office building is in the Rancho Conejo industrial area of Newbury Park, and Baarstad said the district also plans to buy a commercial property to rehouse the maintenance facility.

Conejo Valley High Principal Martin Manzer said his staff and he appreciated Baarstad's efforts to improve their campus.

If the move happened, though, not just the location but also how the school operates would change, he said.

"We'd need to rebrand what we are," Manzer said. "We couldn't take everything we do now and transfer it. I do have some concerns, but it would be modern, and we could offer many more career and technical education opportunities on site and develop job and vocational skills."

Though access to recreational spaces and logistics about supervising students would need to be addressed in a move to a business property, Manzer said the top priority is doing right by students.

"Whatever puts the students into a facility that shows them the community cares about them and shows that they're not second-rate, I'm behind that," he said.

In addition to the Conejo Center Drive property, the school district has placed the high school campus and maintenance facility at the corner of Kelley and Newbury roads on the market as two 5-acre parcels with a minimum bid of $3 million per parcel under its current zoning of commercial use.

The property is one of the last pieces of prime real estate fronting Highway 101, and Baarstad said developers have shown a lot of interest in acquiring the site.

In addition to money from property sales, the district has $6 million in redevelopment funds set aside from before the agency was dissolved and has raised $1 million from the sale of vacant land on Avenida de los Arboles to a housing developer.

If the Kelley Road and Conejo Center Drive sites are sold, plans to move the high school and the maintenance facility can proceed.

Baarstad said he is eager to get things moving.

"This has been talked about for 20 years. I want to get these kids on a great campus," he said.